Neonatal Vaccine Doses Routinely Given – Association with Mortality Rates | Hacker News Reader

Neonatal Vaccine Doses Routinely Given – Association with Mortality Rates

cureus.com

4 pointsfwungy8 comments

> In 2011, using 2009 data, we published a study demonstrating that among the most highly developed nations, those requiring the most vaccine doses for their infants tended to have the least favorable infant mortality rates (r = 0.70, p < .0001).

I stopped right there.

Correlation is interesting, but its not the causation this study is seemingly reaching for.

My scientific methods professor taught that "correlation is not causation BUT when you find it you have to explain it, because correlation is a foundational indicator for science."

Yeah, but in this case thare are a billion variables that are not controlled at all. One could easily spin this paper as super pro or anti vaccine.

All you have to do is look at their chart. It is pretty much a shotgun pattern with a line drawn through it.

https://assets.cureus.com/uploads/figure/file/677883/lightbo...

> There are statistically significant positive correlations between neonatal, infant, and under age five mortality rates of developed nations and the number of early childhood vaccine doses that are routinely given. When developed nations require two versus zero neonatal vaccine doses, or many versus fewer infant vaccine doses, our study suggests there may be unintended consequences that increase all-cause mortality. Further investigations of the hypotheses generated by this study are recommended to confirm that current vaccination schedules are achieving their intended objectives.

What to make of this conclusion? Can someone translate into laymen’s English?

I’m not sure if we should conclude much from this study alone. If you look at the scatter plot, it seems there’s basically no correlation if you discard three of the samples.

The last sentence of the conclusion is the most important. It could be worth doing a bigger study to see if more vaccine doses at an early age unintentionally increases mortality.

The immune system, let alone the body, is a highly complex system. We really don't have any way to know what hacking the immune system with a vaccine does. It may help us avoid condition A but opens up to conditions B,C,D.

The dilemma is that there is a huge profit motive for addressing A, while B,C,D is a cost borne by the individual and their family/support system.

Ironically, if you care about vaccines, the best thing you can do is create a strong and trusted regulatory framework around them so the profit motive accruing to private parties does not overtake them and destroy public trust, as is happening now.

They are really stretching when saying that there is a significant positive correlation. If you look at their chart it looks like someone shot it with a scattergun and then drew a line through it.

https://assets.cureus.com/uploads/figure/file/677883/lightbo...

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